The present technology relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a program, and particularly to an image processing device, and the like which enable a process of determining whether or not a vehicle is parked in a parking stall based on captured image data.
FIG. 20 shows an example of a captured image of a parking lot such as a service area or a parking area on an expressway. As shown in the drawing, a parking lot includes a plurality of parking lanes and passages disposed between the parking lanes. For such a parking lot, a technology of computing the degree of congestion of vehicles for each parking lane and thereby computing the degree of congestion of the entire parking lot has been considered.
In order to compute the degree of congestion of vehicles in parking lanes, it is necessary to detect parking of a vehicle in each parking stall. For example, a method of installing a physical sensor in each parking stall is considered. However, this method is not reasonable due to a large number of sensors to be installed.
A method for detecting parking of a vehicle in each parking stall using a technique of a background difference which is a general image process has been considered (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-049662). However, in a parking lot such as a service area or a parking area of an expressway, entries and exits of vehicles are frequently made at all times, and parking stalls located close to toilets or shops go unoccupied only for extremely short periods of time. For these reasons, it is difficult to detect vehicles using the method.